What is Love
by Racke
Summary: Like many wonderful stories, this one started out with a kiss. Bromance!Platonic!Haruhi/Kyon; or Haruhi and Kyon as heterosexual life-partners.


XXX

**Story**: [What is Love?]

**Summary**: Like many wonderful stories, this one started out with a kiss. Bromance!Platonic!Haruhi/Kyon; or Haruhi and Kyon as heterosexual life-partners.

**Genre**: Humor, Friendship

XXX

Like many wonderful stories, this one started out with a kiss.

Well, technically it was a _second_ kiss, but I'm pretty sure that almost-dreams shouldn't really count.

However, this was also the moment when this particular 'wonderful story' took a decisive turn for the non-standard.

"Yuck." Haruhi expressed with much emphasis.

I was more inclined towards 'blergh' myself, but she was making a convincing argument.

Swiping desperately at her lips, Haruhi glared at me. "This is your fault!" She ruthlessly decided.

Which is completely unfair, because she must've at least been _half_ responsible, because I sure as hell didn't do this whole kissing-thing all on my own, thank you very much!

"Yeah, but you-...!" She trailed off, trying to figure out some reason to blame me without ending up feeling overly guilty about it at a later date. It was apparently detrimental to her position if she could easily be guilt-tripped by her subordinates.

Oh please, how should I've known that kissing you would have had all of the awkward boredom of kissing my little sister?

"That's it!" Haruhi's eyes flashed triumphantly at finding her excuse. "You should've realized that this 'love' thing was totally platonic, because at least you have a sibling!"

Yeah, thanks for that mental image. Now I'm feeling horribly uncomfortable with all those memories of staring at your ass. Good going, Haruhi.

She blinks at me for a long moment, than her face starts turning green. "Dammit Kyon! Stop making me remember staring at your ass!"

Ah, so that wasn't a one-sided thing? Well, I suppose that it's good to hear that I'm at least not the only pervert. Now, if that could just come out of the mouth of a girl who I could actually _date_!

Haruhi began to stomp her foot petulantly. "Goddammit! This was supposed to be the big moment, Kyon! And you went and screwed it up by being like a brother or something!"

Sure, blame it all on the guy who's having a life-crisis about realizing that all of the attractive girls in his life are people he can't actually be attracted to. Dammit, this is so totally unfair! Haruhi, this is all your fault! Stop being like a sister to me!

Perhaps needless to say, this argument continued for quite a while, somehow managing to grow impossible more inane with every exchange.

XXX

"He dumped me!" Haruhi exclaims as she slams the door open.

Which is kind of excessive really, what did that poor door ever do to you? Also, who are you talking about?

"My boyfriend!" Haruhi elaborates, before making a disgusted face. "He thought that I was cheating on him with _you_!"

Well, what a way to put me off my appetite, Haruhi. And no, this doesn't mean you can have my ice-cream, I need that for comforting-reasons.

Haruhi scoffs. "Please, if anyone should get ice-cream today, it's me."

Narrowing my eyes at her, I begin the bargaining process by pointing out that I was the one who actually _paid_ for the ice-cream and should as such be immediately responsible for it ending up in _my_ belly. Plus, it'd probably just go straight to her thighs anyway.

"I don't want to hear diet-tips from a guy who's trying to develop a pot-belly." Haruhi glares at me, before ignoring all of my arguments and grabbing the ice-cream package in order to fill a large portion of her own.

And I'm not so much _trying_ to develop one, as I am generally not doing much in order to _avoid_ developing one. Those are two completely different things, dumbass.

Haruhi pretends not to notice my criticism and instead drops down next to me on the couch.

"Why are we watching the cat movie?" She asks through a mouthful of ice-cream.

The same reason we always watch the cat movie. We're trying to escape from the harshness of actual movies, and are instead pretending that adorably felines doing various adorable thing are the only thing that exists in the world.

There is a long period of silence as we both eat ice-cream, hypnotized by the television screen.

"Whoever made this movie was a genius." Haruhi admits after a few moments of staring at fluffy wagging tails.

Much better than your attempt at being a director, that's for sure.

"Laugh it up, tubby." Haruhi mutters around another spoonful of ice-cream.

We remain companionably quiet as we stare at the screen of cats for several long minutes, before Haruhi finally speaks up again.

"Wait, why were _you_ watching the cat movie?" She turns to me.

For the same reason that I always watch the cat movie. I'm trying to pretend that the world is a wonderful place.

Haruhi stares at me for a long moment, before leaning back into the couch with a heavy groan. "Again?"

I'm pretty sure this one would've lasted a lot longer, if you hadn't been so damn _loud_.

"Hey! It's not my fault we can't afford sound-proofing our bedrooms." She glares at me.

How about just getting a gag?

"Why don't _you_ get a gag." She punches my shoulder. Hard.

Speaking of violently attacking innocent people, how many teeth did this one lose?

"_One time_! I did that _one time_!" Haruhi protests.

And if I get called as a character-witness again, I'm so totally telling them of the time that you drop-kicked the computer class president.

"Oh come on! That was _years_ ago! And he was shouting about challenging my authority at the top of his lungs, he totally had it coming!" Haruhi frowns at me.

I can still remember it, clear as day, your honor. He was standing right in front of me, and then she just viciously attacked him out of nowhere. I think I might've had a heart-attack.

Haruhi starts laughing. "Yeah, you would totally have had a heart-attack at sixteen."

Laugh it up, criminal scum. True justice will prevail. Also, pass the ice-cream.

XXX

Nagato had considered it for one single blink of her eyes, accepted it with the tiniest of nods, and then returned her attention to reading her current book. I found it hard to feel even remotely surprise by her ability to simply not give a damn. I did however feel vaguely proud for some reason, perhaps because of an added sarcastic voice-over from my subconscious, that told me that she'd already known all about it and that we were both dumbasses for not noticing faster.

It warmed my heart to know that the tradition of silent commentary and caustic sarcasm was one that would be carried onwards by Nagato – even if only in my imagination – since she was quite a lot like a little sister to me. Except endlessly less annoying than my actual little sister. And also a lot less likely to wake me up by jumping on me, shouting a battle-cry at the top of her lungs.

You know, in hindsight, I should've totally seen my sibling-feelings to Haruhi coming. Those two cheerfully violent girls are damn-near identical sometimes.

Koizumi at least had the decency to look a bit startled at the news, though he quickly covered it up with a fondly sympathetic smile and a sincere apology. When questioned on what he'd done to feel an apology was necessary, he'd answered simply that it was on behalf of the world, since if the Creator even existed, it was highly unlikely that it would decide to apologize to us in person for the mix-up.

Haruhi grudgingly allowed this to slide, but explained to him in no uncertain terms that if the Creator ever _did_ show up to apologize, that she wouldn't allow him to take its side above the Brigade's.

She then spent a few moments muttering darkly about 'overly religious subordinates'.

I carefully didn't mention the irony of it all, considering what Koizumi's organization has to say about the world's creation. It was hilarious, but still not a topic to be breached lightly.

Asahina looked a bit nervous, and then a bit flustered at the realization that we'd already been kissing when we finally figured it out. She then rather visibly caught herself from congratulating us on becoming a couple, as she remembered that we _weren't like that_.

She's a very sweet girl, but after the many times that I've had to interfere with Haruhi's various ideas over the years, I honestly can't look at her with 'dirty' eyes without reflexively beginning to look for a crowbar in order to pry Haruhi off of her.

So, even if I actually don't see her as a sister – something which is unfortunately horrifyingly rare in my circle of friends, now that I think about it – I can't actually imagine dating her, without beginning to consider the various places for me to hide my body after having murdered myself in cold blood. And that's actually enough of a reason for my libido to have long since given up on it. There are only so many times one can throw themselves at an immoveable wall of protectiveness before surrendering in disgust at the unfairness of the world.

And that was that, apparently.

I was single again, and was faced with the slowly dawning realization that any other girls in school viewed me as already being 'claimed property'. Which meant that I couldn't actually try and date a girl who knew Haruhi – because everyone seemed disturbingly convinced that we were simply being dishonest about our feelings for each other – so I would instead have to _introduce_ a girl willing to date me to Haruhi.

Because non-romantic feelings or not, we're kind of joined at the hips sometimes, and it was really only a matter of time until one of them would have a run-in with the other girl.

The problem quickly coming to the forefront in this matter was that Haruhi was fairly protective, and even when she wasn't, she was kind of intimidating.

You know: good looks, amazing intelligence, impressive athletic ability, a position of already being extremely close to the boy that the the girl in question has just started dating, and the personality of an unstoppable hurricane.

Trust me, if a male version of Haruhi popped up out of the woodwork, I'd be intimidated too.

The problem with this was that because of her intimidation factor, every girlfriend introduced to her soon ended up as an ex-girlfriend.

Except that one girl who was scared off when introduced to Nagato, which had been weird. Extremely competent and attractive as she might be, I can't for the life of me understand how the girl can be considered intimidating by anyone who hasn't actually seen her fight. Or seen her covered in her own blood, wearing an expression not far off from resigned boredom...

Yeah, I would probably be quite a lot more than merely 'a bit' intimidated by Nagato too. But like I said, that girl _hadn't_ seen her like that, so it was weird.

Still, this meant that there literally didn't seem to be any girl who'd both be willing to date me, _and_ willing to put up with Haruhi's general level of cheerful madness.

Thus, I remained frustratingly and reoccurringly single, despite my many attempts to rectify the situation.

On the other side of the problem, Haruhi had to introduce any of _her_ boyfriends to the Brigade as well, if only because she refused to pause our club-activities for the sake of some insignificant human. And that meant that Koizumi smiled placidly – and made them back off nervously. Nagato stared at them without blinking for eerily long moments – because blinking got in the way of visually evaluating the specimen. Asahina smiled nervously and served tea – making quite a number of the males seem to seriously consider drooling. And I visibly restrained myself from beating them senseless for staring at Asahina – it's reflexive by now, I really can't help it.

So, obviously, Haruhi remained just as frustratingly single. And we took great pleasure in ribbing each other for it. If only because it meant that we had someone else with whom to share our misery.

Then we graduated, and ended up going to college – because Haruhi wouldn't allow anyone of her subordinates to become an 'uneducated bum' on her watch. After that, well... I got a job somewhere halfway through college, Koizumi was already hired, Nagato was pointlessly rich through stock-exchange and tended to spend most of her time reading books in the middle of various university lectures, Asahina managed to land a teaching job at a local school, and Haruhi got expelled after punching some snotty rich-kid on the nose.

Well, it was more like the school had been very uncomfortable with her remaining there when she kept getting dragged into court by the spoiled kid's overprotective parents, so she'd just cut her losses, tested out of a bunch of her classes, and then grabbed a job as a freelance journalist.

And when I say 'grab', I'm implying that she might've lifted someone off the floor because they looked down on her. And since there were certain things that 'normal people' weren't generally comfortable with handling, which Haruhi wouldn't mind at all, she fit in rather well in her chosen niche.

It takes a special kind of person to be perfectly okay with interviewing known and high-ranking yakuza members about the various skeletons in their closets.

Which is why we ended up living together.

Well... not _officially_ so, but we've got it on good authority that it's unofficially perfectly true. Not that either of us think we're ever going to actually get an admittance from anyone that her apartment burning down had been anything other than an unfortunate accident.

And not at all related to Haruhi cheerfully aiding in putting about a dozen different people behind bars.

Perhaps I ought to be terrified by that, but I honestly can't really imagine getting killed by some upset group of criminals. Not when Nagato has explicitly told me that she won't allow either of us to get ourselves killed like that. Not when Koizumi has greeted me with an unusually vicious and disturbingly triumphant placid smile on his face as he mentioned various accidents that have put quite a large number of interesting people in hospitals. And not when Asahina has given me a discrete thumbs-up on the issue.

As for Haruhi... well, it's not _that_ hard for the girl to figure things out, if she's actually capable of allowing herself to believe the answers. So she has in turn demanded a list of names from Koizumi that she now refuses to investigate on behalf of 'family emergencies'. And Tsuruya tends to get very well-thought out gifts from her whenever the opportunity presents itself.

All in all, we're doing well for ourselves.

I mean yeah, it'd be nice if Nagato wasn't the _only_ one of us who was rich as a troll. And it would be nice to have a bigger apartment, or an apartment that had soundproofed walls – for all of the times that Haruhi decided to bring a boyfriend home – but it wasn't exactly uncomfortable either.

So things continued as they always did, and if both Haruhi and I introduce each other as siblings to whoever we're dating at the time, that is just a lot easier than trying to explain the actual situation. Though every now and then one of our dates turns out to be the _investigating_ type, which means that they'll most likely find a way to dramatically reveal our actual non-blood situation at some especially complicated moment and help make everything even more awkward than usual.

Then again, I'll always fondly remember that one time when my actual little sister had been present during one such 'reveal', and had promptly deflated the whole self-righteous rant with a rather blunt 'that's stupid' before going on to explain that family was family, even if they weren't technically family.

Haruhi had laughed so hard at the expression that they'd made that she hadn't been able to crawl off the floor for the rest of the evening.

It'd been a pretty great Christmas all around.

XXX


End file.
